Our son Nick recently visited us for the holidays. We both like to play chess, so we had a couple friendly competitions in the family room. Now that my brain is atrophying due to age and excessive amounts of social media, he destroyed me.
But it got me to thinking about a guy who was once a sort of chess-playing pop star: Bobby Fischer. Bobby was an American chess grandmaster who won the U.S. championship in 1956 at the cheeky age of 14. Overall, he won eight U.S. championships, including a rare 11-0 victory in 1963-64, the only perfect score in the tournament’s history. He’s mainly known for his Cold War rivalry with a Russian named Boris Spassky. In 1972 he defeated Spassky to become World Chess Champion.
Fischer had his title revoked in 1975 after making outrageous demands prior to a match with Anatoly Karpov. Some think he did it deliberately because his chess skills were so far beyond anyone else, and he had nothing else to prove.
I didn’t learn chess until I was 15, but I competed for my high school chess team, and wore out the book Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess. These days, since my wife refuses to learn the game, the only time I drag out the chessboard is when Nick visits.
Fischer died of kidney failure in 2013. I already vaguely knew of certain “personality quirks” of his. Wikipedia filled in the details. They’re not pretty:
- Although his mother was Jewish, Fischer was a vehement anti-Semite and Holocaust denier
- Fischer believed in an international Jewish conspiracy
- He agreed with Nietzsche that religion was used to dull the senses of the people, but then joined the evangelical Worldwide Church of God in the mid-1960s
- Fischer believed that the world would soon come to an end
- He became Catholic at the end of his life and believed “the only hope for the world is through Catholicism”
- Fischer got along well with Jewish chess players, but at the same time wrote that “It’s time to start randomly killing Jews”
- After 911, Fischer applauded the attacks and said “What goes around, comes around”
- Fischer openly hoped for a military coup d’état and execution of Jews in the United States
Fischer was never formally diagnosed, but some people have speculated on his sanity.
Check.
***
Last night I watched news coverage and analysis of last year’s January 6 insurrection against the U.S. Capitol, and it struck me that Fischer might fit in well with a lot of people in America today. Not so much because of his anti-Semitism and religious obsessions—which are bad enough—but because of his anti-rationalism and conspiracy obsessions.
Today, America has an entire political party—the Republican Party—that has hitched its wagon to an autocratic demagogue who continues to spread a Big Lie about an election result. Not to mention who once ridiculed the coronavirus threat as being a Democratic conspiracy (and views man-made climate change as a worldwide liberal conspiracy).
The PBS show Frontline just aired a documentary that reveals conspiracy theorists and right-wing extremism have only gotten worse since a year ago.
And House Republican Liz Cheney was unseated earlier this year from her conference chair because she condemned Trump for instigating the January 6 riot and implored her fellow Republicans to stand up to him and his catacomb of lies. (Obviously, they haven’t.)
Cheney’s father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, one of the most conservative Republicans during the Bush II era (and called “Darth Vader” by critics for his hawkishness and advocacy of torture as policy), was quoted as saying today’s Republican leaders don’t resemble “any of the folks I knew.”
The two Cheneys were surrounded by Democrats and the only Republicans present in the House during a moment of silence yesterday.
***
One would think things couldn’t get much worse than January 6, 2021. But according to George Packer, staff writer at The Atlantic and part of a panel on PBS Newshour yesterday, the insurrection is probably just a harbinger, a “warning shot”:
How can one overreact to a mortal threat to American democracy, the first in my lifetime that actually seems to be on a road toward making it impossible for the popular will to be respected at the ballot box?
That’s been the goal of all these bills passed or debated across legislatures in Georgia, in Arizona, in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, which are not just about restricting access to the ballot, but are about putting elections in the hands of reliable partisans, so that, next time around, we will have states that claim that the election was somehow wrongly held, and that it’s thrown into the hands of a partisan legislature, which sends its own electors to Congress to choose the next president.
When you have a compelling but divisive leader, and a political party that falls in behind him, and you can convince enough people to believe in unfounded conspiracies…anything can happen. Witness 1930s Germany. Witness 2022 America.
While you can’t formally diagnose a nation, some people (like myself) have speculated on America’s sanity.
Checkmate.
longitudes 
Excellent and chilling post, Pete.
Thanks, Holly.
Nicely written. A recent poll said that one in four American believe those storming the Capital on Jan. 6 were saving democracy. About half of Republicans still think so. I can’t explain it.
A Marist poll says only 10 percent of Republicans consider the 1/6/21 uprising an “insurrection,” which Merriam-Webster defines as “a usually violent attempt to take control of a government.” That tells me that 90 percent of Republicans either haven’t been following the news lately, or maybe they’re confusing the word “insurrection” with “introspection.” Either way, it’s cause for concern.
Half of Republicans felt it was saving democracy.
Like one of those PBS Newshour analysts said, democracy depends on people behaving in “a roughly rational way.” But one of our two major parties has fallen under the spell of “irrational interpretation(s) of events.” Barring the sudden emergence of a middle party, which is highly unlikely, there’s nothing one can do other than watch democracy continue to unravel. The insurrection didn’t work, but Republican legislators are doing everything they can to suppress voter rights.
Wow, I never knew that Fischer was an anti-Semitic nut. How sad for him. I am deeply troubled by today’s Republican party, and I stand with Liz Cheney and her old man. I always thought Dick was unfairly maligned by Democrats. I think he was and is a good man. (Move tip: Vice starring Christian Bale).
Thanks, Tad. But I don’t think Cheney was unfairly maligned by Dems at all. Neither I nor the United Nations, and possibly even the U.S. Constitution, believes that waterboarding political prisoners is morally or legally defensible. I also don’t agree with starting wars with nations based on erroneous information about “weapons of mass destruction.” I would think, as a veteran, you’d be upset about that as well.
The best thing that ever happened to Bush-Cheney was Donald Trump. He lowered the bar even further, which I didn’t think was possible.
Pete, as you know, the build-up to the Iraq War was a long and complicated process. US and foreign intelligence sources were unanimous in their belief that Saddam Hussein was harboring WMDs. In 2002, Congress passed the Authorization of Use for Military Force against Iraq (AUMF). Joe Biden, then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, staunchly supported this resolution at the time and was instrumental in its passage (although he later flip-flopped to save his political skin). Joining Biden with Yes votes in the Senate were none other than John Kerry and Hillary Clinton. In fact, 29 (58%) of Senate Democrats voted to authorize the war. Talk about bipartisanship! Nobody wants to remember that now, of course. It’s easier to disingenuously lay the blame at Cheney’s feet, hence the Darth Vader narrative so popular among liberals. This is what I mean by his being unfairly maligned. Historical context matters, Pete, even if you don’t like someone.
Not sure where you’re getting your info, Tad, although I can guess. No, I don’t know that the lead-up to the Iraq War was “long and complicated.” Bush, Rumsfeld, and Cheney began scheming to invade Iraq immediately after 9/11 and the invasion occurred only a year and a half later. There were no “foreign intelligence sources” other than one Iraqi emigrant living in Germany and a compromise by allies to resume weapons inspections. The IAEA found “no evidence or plausible indication” of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq. The only allies who joined the U.S. in invading were the U.K., Australia, and Poland (and most of their citizens roundly condemned the invasion). Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Powell also falsely cited a connection between Hussein and al-Qaeda. The UN condemned the invasion, and
the Chilcot Report said the U.S. and U.K. had violated the United Nations Security Council. Dick Cheney was a principal architect of that invasion (and you didn’t mention his advocacy of torture as an interrogation technique). The only thing here that I agree with is that Biden, Kerry, Clinton, and other yellow Dems in Congress fell in line with the Bush-Cheney administration. Obviously, because they didn’t want to appear “unpatriotic” in the wake of 9/11.
Anyway, what does this have to do with my essay? I brought up Cheney not because I think “he’s a good man.” I don’t, I think he’s reprehensible. I mentioned him because I think it’s telling that even an ultraconservative like him is appalled by today’s Republican Party. And while I don’t like Liz Cheney policies, I admire how she stepped out of line when every other Republican is now lining up to kiss the ring of Donald Trump.
(But I still like you. If you want to hike a section, I’ll be at Wind Gap, PA on May 1.)
It’s beyond belief to me that people like this exist. And yet, they do. In droves. They are despicable. They are mutants.
Clueless pawns in a mad chess game.
Watched a doc on Bob a few years ago. He was quite the guy.
Ha! Well, Bobby Fischer was merely the lead-in, my friend, but you’re probably wise not to get entangled in America’s goofy politics!
You know I dont bite on that. I got your lead-in. Our yougest guy represented his school in a chess tournament when he was young lad. He gave up the pieces to indulge in more physical activities like bashing a puck around. Brought back memories when you were talking chess. He kicked my ass anytime we played and he was in grade school.